8'2" x 11'8" Persian Heriz Rug | Unusually Fine Curvilinear Medallion | Circa 1980s

This is not the blocky village Heriz most buyers picture. The 8'2" x 11'8" piece here was drawn with a curved line: the medallion is round-shouldered rather than stepped, the vines in the ivory spandrels swing instead of turning at right angles, and the tiny rosettes scattered through the field are shaded across three or four tones. It is a workshop-level drawing executed on the tough, glossy wool that made the Heriz district famous, woven in the 1980s and kept in perfect condition with full pile edge to edge. At roughly 8x12 it covers a standard living or dining floor without crowding it, and it sits comfortably alongside other 8x11 Persian rugs in scale. Every rug we ship leaves with a certificate of authenticity recording origin, material, age and size.

Design and Motifs

The center holds a navy lozenge medallion with a brick red rosette core, ringed by ivory palmette leaves and a pearl band of small dots. From it, 2 navy pendants run up and down the long axis, each one shaped like a closed flower head with an ivory blossom inside. Around the medallion the red field carries 8 large camel and rose palmettes, split leaves that curl back on themselves, and pairs of navy cartouches filled with ivory harshang forms. The 4 corners break into broad ivory spandrels drawn with thin arabesque vines, flowering sprays and rose-pink cloudbands, which is where this weaver shows the most confidence. The main border is a deep navy ground carrying alternating rose palmettes and ivory serrated leaves on a continuous scrolling vine, framed by 2 narrow ivory guard stripes of running flower heads. If you want to place the drawing in time, our guide on how to date an oriental rug walks through the same clues we use.

Color: Terracotta Red, Navy and a Wide Ivory Frame

The field is a warm terracotta red that shifts between brick and soft rust as the light moves across the wool, the natural abrash you see in good hand-spun yarn. Against it the navy blue reads almost black in the medallion and border ground, which is what gives the rug its depth from across a room. Ivory does the heavy lifting: it fills the spandrels, outlines every palmette and runs through both guard stripes, keeping the red from going heavy. Between those 3 anchors sit the quieter tones, dusty rose and salmon pink in the cloudbands, camel and beige in the large leaves, soft gold in the vine work, and small touches of light blue and muted green inside the flower heads and stems. The overall effect is warm rather than dark, and it pairs easily with cream walls, walnut furniture and aged leather.

Heriz: Weaving East of Tabriz

Heriz is a group of villages in northwest Persia, east of Tabriz on the slopes below Mount Sabalan. The water there is mineral-rich and the sheep grow a famously tough, lustrous fleece, which is the reason Heriz rugs outlast almost everything else on a busy floor. Most village work in the district is coarse by design, usually under 200 knots per square inch, because the weavers work from memory and draw in straight lines. This piece is the exception worth paying attention to: the knot is noticeably tighter, the outlines are clean enough to carry curves, and the ivory spandrel vines are finer than a standard Heriz loom would attempt, pointing to a master weaver working closer to Tabriz standards. On a cotton foundation with a dense wool pile, it is a rug built to be walked on for another 50 years.